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National BestsellerWinner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography

A New York Times Notable Book

Winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Film Prize for Excellence in Science Books

Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, TIME.com, NPR, Slate, Entertainment Weekly, Newsday, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Kirkus Reviews

Geobiologist Hope Jahren has spent her life studying trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Lab Girl is her revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also a celebration of the lifelong curiosity, humility, and passion that drive every scientist. In these pages, Hope takes us back to her Minnesota childhood, where she spent hours in unfettered play in her father’s college laboratory. She tells us how she found a sanctuary in science, learning to perform lab work “with both the heart and the hands.” She introduces us to Bill, her brilliant, eccentric lab manager. And she extends the mantle of scientist to each one of her readers, inviting us to join her in observing and protecting our environment. Warm, luminous, compulsively readable, Lab Girl vividly demonstrates the mountains that we can move when love and work come together.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Engrossing. . . . Thrilling. . . . Does for botany what Oliver Sacks’s essays did for neurology, what Stephen Jay Gould’s writings did for paleontology.” —The New York Times

“Lab Girl made me look at trees differently. It compelled me to ponder the astonishing grace and gumption of a seed. Perhaps most importantly, it introduced me to a deeply inspiring woman—a scientist so passionate about her work I felt myself vividly with her on every page. This is a smart, enthralling, and winning debut.” —Cheryl Strayed

“A powerful new memoir . . . Jahren is a remarkable scientist who turns out to be a remarkable writer as well. . . . Think Stephen Jay Gould or Oliver Sacks. But Hope Jahren is a woman in science, who speaks plainly to just how rugged that can be. And to the incredible machinery of life around us.” —On Point/NPR

“Some people are great writers, while other people live lives of adventure and importance. Almost no one does both. Hope Jahren does both. She makes me wish I’d been a scientist.” —Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder

“Lab Girl surprised, delighted, and moved me. I was drawn in from the start by the clarity and beauty of Jahren’s prose. . . . With Lab Girl, Jahren joins those talented scientists who are able to reveal to us the miracle of this world in which we live.” —Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone

“Warm, witty . . . Fascinating. . . . Jahren’s singular gift is her ability to convey the everyday wonder of her work: exploring the strange, beautiful universe of living things that endure and evolve and bloom all around us, if we bother to look.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Deeply affecting. . . . A totally original work, both fierce and uplifting. . . . A belletrist in the mold of Oliver Sacks, she is terrific at showing just how science is done. . . . She’s an acute observer, prickly, and funny as hell.” —Elle

“Magnificent. . . . [A] gorgeous book of life. . . . Jahren contains multitudes. Her book is love as life. Trees as truth.” —Chicago Tribune

“Mesmerizing. . . . Deft and flecked with humor . . . a scientist’s memoir of a quirky, gritty, fascinating life. . . . Like Robert Sapolsky’s A Primate’s Memoir or Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, it delivers the zing of a beautiful mind in nature.” —Seattle Times

“Jahren's memoir [is] the beginning of a career along the lines of Annie Dillard or Diane Ackerman.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“A scientific memoir that's beautifully human.” —Popular Science

“Breathtakingly honest. . . . Gorgeous. . . . At its core, Lab Girl is a book about seeing—with the eyes, but also the hands and the heart.” —American Scientist

About the Author

Hope Jahren is an award-winning scientist who has been pursuing independent research in paleobiology since 1996, when she completed her PhD at University of California Berkeley and began teaching and researching first at the Georgia Institute of Technology and then at Johns Hopkins University. She is the recipient of three Fulbright Awards and is one of four scientists, and the only woman, to have been awarded both of the Young Investigator Medals given within the Earth Sciences. She was a tenured professor at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu from 2008 to 2016, where she built the Isotope Geobiology Laboratories, with support from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. She currently holds the J. Tuzo Wilson professorship at the University of Oslo, Norway.

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Jahren is a beautiful writer. Her chapters on soil and trees and plants were gripping and eye opening--even for this scientist reader. Yet this book, which might better be considered a platonic love story to Bill, her long time lab partner, rather than a book about the life of a scientist, was tainted by the gleeful disdain that Jahren and Bill show for many other people. I would give the book five stars if she'd just stuck to the plants and Bill.

At one point Jahren compares the intelligence of her graduate students to her dog-- and the dog wins. She refers to another quiet student on a trip as "warm-blooded cargo," because of his uselessness as a driver. What really sealed the deal for me was the road trip. 5 Days before a conference, Jahren and Bill decide they want to attend. They decide to drive cross country, taking two graduate students with them to share in the driving (not to enrich their education or anything). One day, Jahren does not heed multiple warnings and directs the graduate student driver to go straight into a snow storm. Predictably, the van flips when they hit some ice. Lessons Jahren learned: 1) When you pee into bottles make sure to cap them. 2) Wear a seat belt. The student driver, understandably shaken, asks to be dropped off at the airport so she can fly home, but Jahren and Bill yell at her and refuse, calling her a quitter. They drag her to the conference in the banged up van so that Jahren can deliver the talk that was so important that it was never mentioned again in the book. When they return, Jahren nobly claims responsibility for the busted university van (as she should-- she was in charge!). How selfless.

Jahren and Bill enjoy giving their students a repetitive, meaningless task, like labeling hundreds of bottles, and then telling them that, sorry, they won't be using their work after all. To pass their sadistic test a student must both resign his or herself to the monotony that is science and accept that the work was wasted, but also salvage something from the time spent. A memorable student saved all the bottle caps, hoping they could be "spares" in the future.

There are little stories like this woven into the book, souring the beautiful language on scientific discovery and personal passion. I was a graduate student once and this culture is pervasive and horrifying and drives good students from pursuing science. A student may have the passion, but s/he just can't contend with being treated like the scum on Jahren's shoes. I admire Jahren's scientific successes and her obvious dedication, but it is overshadowed by her perpetuation of a problematic culture.

I was sucked into this memoir probably because I'm about the same age, from roughly the same places in Dr. Jahren's life and I'm also a scientist. However, it also helped that she has a very engaging writing style with all the personal details that makes me wonder how the *heck* she remembered every tiny detail. This is not a simple "I was born, grew up and lived" story. It reads like a novel, with plot twists, heroes, villains and a relatively happy ending.

I appreciate the way she incorporated her struggles with mental illness, women in science and university funding (which will make any tuition paying parent give a HARD look at the college they are paying to educate their child at) within the book but never came off as whiny or complaining. Simply this is "the way it is". She is also deeply personal with her own thoughts on her childhood, the self doubts we all have in our twenties and eventually parenthood.

It was an entertaining, informative and inspiring read. Sometimes we don't know if we're making the right decisions, but if we made them, they are at least ours.

The first time I experienced this book, it was the audio version performed by the author. I loved it, so I bought it, and read it through a second time. Although oftentimes when I discuss a book with friends I come to like it a little bit less or more, in the case of this book, that was not the case. My friend pointed out that she does some unethical things (and she does) but that didn't sway me. Instead, I appreciated the fact that she has become such a successful person in spite of the fact that like all of us, she IS flawed and she is not afraid to share that fact. I loved that readers learn that she suffers from a mental illness (this isn't a spoiler, the book is ranked #1 in bipolar disorder). I love that she has such a great relationship with her lab partner, Bill. And I love that she provides tons of interesting information about plants. In fact, there is very little that I don't love about this book. The one thing that I wonder, even after experiencing it two times, is that she keeps details of her upbringing somewhat private and alludes to not having been shown a lot of love; however, that didn't change the fact that I loved the book.

In summary, I can't imagine anyone who is the slightest interested in STEM subjects who wouldn't enjoy reading this book. Great companion reads: The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer and All That the Rain Promises and More by David Arora.

I'm a mathematician and don't always appreciate good writing, but this was amazing writing! I laughed and I cried and learned lots about trees. My father was a forester and I grew up loving trees and studying dendrology as an elective in college, so the plant info was very very welcome. But really beyond the trees this was a beautiful and positive unfolding of intertwining lives, told from the heart. The analogies and careful descriptions brought it alive in my mind. I found myself wishing I could see a photo of each of the characters in the book.

My 2 sisters and 2 scientist-children will receive this book as a gift! Thank you so much to Hope Jahren for writing this and I will read anything else you decide to write!